Tuesday inside
Oil project
The University of Kansas will use a $2.3 million grant from the U.S.Department of Energy to try to revive old oil fields throughout the state using an oil-extraction process involving carbon dioxide. PAGE 3A
Vol.114 Issue No.69
Expensive meals Where's the money? Where's the beef? Increasing beef prices leave consumers and businesses with frustration and lighter wallets. PAGE 3A
Frog stomp
The Jayhawks struggle in the first half against the Horned
Frogs but put the game away in the second. PAGE 12A
Sizing up the quarterbacks
Kansas quarterback Bill Whittemore and North Carolina State's Philip
Rivers must face each other at the Tangerine Bowl. PAGE 12A
We're No.1
University of Kansas students sound off about the men's basketball team receiving the No.1 ranking in the Associated Press poll yesterday. PAGE12A
Weather Today
4631
getting colder
Two-day forecast tomorrow Thursday 3629 4121 snow possible skies clearing
Talk to us
index
Tell us your news. Contact Michelle Burhenn-Rombeck, Lindsay Hanson or Leah Shaffer at 864-4810 or editor@kansan.com
Briefs 2A
Opinion 4A
Sports 12A
Sports briefs 9A
Horoscopes 10A
Comics 10A
KANSAN
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
The Student Newspaper of the University of Kansas
our pill or mine?
Sperm beware: Male hormonal birth control could be available within 4 years
By Danielle Hillix
dhillix@kansan.com
dhillix staff writer
Seductive music and heavy breathing fill a darkened room. The romantic scent of roses saturates the air, and candlelight illuminates the bed.
Everything is in place for a passionate love of lovemaking.
But wait: There are no condoms! And she's not on the pill!
No problem. He is.
The search is on for hormone-controlled methods of male birth control. Researchers hope to some-day offer men a list of options similar to those available for women. Decades of investigations recently have produced significant findings and researchers hope to have a product on the market within four years.
For decades, birth control has mostly been the woman's responsibility. It is up to her to take a pill every day, wear a patch every week, or get an injection every three months.
Men, on the other hand, have limited choices and responsibility when it comes to birth control. Condoms and vasectomies are the only contraceptive options available to men. But researchers throughout the world, including two at the University of Kansas, are working to change that.
Experts are confident that new male hormonal methods can be effective at preventing pregnancy. That is, if they can get men to use them - and women to trust the men.
Mission: Sperm Shutdown
Effective, reversible and safe hormonal birth control has been available for women since the pill was introduced in 1960. Planned Parenthood said that more than 80 percent of American women will take the pill at some point in their lives. When used correctly, the pill is more than 99 percent effective.
While not as reliable, hormonal injections, implants and patches are also popular forms of birth control for women. Women can also choose sponges, diaphragms or spermicides.
Female hormonal contraceptives work basically the same way, no matter how they are administered. The contraceptive contains high doses of estrogens and progestins, hormones found naturally in the body. These hormones combine to prevent the body from releasing eggs, which in turn prevents pregnancy.
Male hormonal contraceptives would work similarly. In products currently being tested in the United States, testosterone and progestins combine to prevent the body from producing sperm, which in turn prevents pregnancy in a female partner.
Ideally, male hormonal contraceptives would reduce a man's sperm count to zero. That is no easy task, considering that a healthy male produces 1,000 sperm per second. One milliliter of ejaculate, enough to fill a thimble, contains anywhere from 20 million to 200 million sperm. A wide variety of factors, from smoking to genetics, can affect sperm count.
SEE BIRTH CONTROL ON PAGE 6A
Mother's diligence keeps memory alive
By Kate Nelson
knelson@kansan.com
Kansan senior staff writer
It began with a phone call.
At 6:30 a.m., the ringing woke Jeanette Stauffer from her sleep. The half-hour conversation with a Costa Rican embassy official was followed by nine more calls.
It was Mother's Day. Instead of planting spring flowers with her daughters, Stauffer learned that one of her girls had been brutally murdered abroad.
Editor's note: This is the second in a three-part series about the murder of Shannon Martin, a Topeka senior who was killed May 13, 2001, while completing research in Costa Rica.
What has followed was two and a half years of public anguish, anger and grieving, accompanied by little relief. When Stauffer learned that her daughter Shannon Martin died that morning, local and state Costa Rican police had no clear leads. But she was soothed, she said, because investigators promised to "leave no stone unturned." But it became apparent that promise wasn't being fulfilled as the investigation lagged on for months and then years.
Initially, information about the circumstances surrounding Martin's death was scant. The 23-year-old senior had returned to Golfito, Costa Rica, for a
seven-day trip to collect fern samples for an honors thesis. She had been there the spring semester and summer before while studying biology through a University of Kansas program.
Photo contributed by Tim Rogers
Martin was slated to graduate with honors the next week. She planned to walk down the hill with her boyfriend, Dave Schmitz, and younger sister, Sheri, but about 1 a.m. May 13, 2001, those plans were ruined.
After spending the night salsa dancing with friends at a Golfito disco. Martin walked home alone that Saturday night. Her body was found later; she had been stabbed 14 times.
Jeanette Stauffer showed a photo of her daughter Shannon Martin to judges Nov. 24 in a goltto, Costa Rica, courtroom. The three-judge tribunal that heard the case convicted two of the three people charged with Martin's murder and sentenced them each to 15 years in prison.
Stauffer, 58, has attacked every
Zealous approach
aspect of the case with zeal to keep the investigation going, making herself a public figure both here and in Golfito. In all, she solicited countless amounts of media coverage, paid for hundreds of hours of investigative work and spent thousands of dollars — an estimated $100,000 altogether, and $22,000 during the last trip alone—so that someone would be convicted for Martin's murder.
Yet even now that two of the three Costa Ricans accused of killing Martin were sentenced to 15 years in prison
SEE MARTIN ON PAGE 5A
Calendar focuses on women at work
By Paul Kramer
pkramer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
If women with character, intelligence and leadership are what you are looking for, then the Women of Distinction Calendar is for you.
The Emily Taylor Women's Resource Center is sponsoring the calendar to show women who make a difference at the University of Kansas.
Photos will show women in working in the areas that distinguish them on campus. Poses will include women behind desks, in campus offices or wherever they feel best portraits what they do.
"The pictures will highlight the
women in a setting they feel will describe their work," said Kathy Rose-Mockry, program director of the Resource Center.
The calendar will be in poster form, with the actual calendar in the middle and 16 pictures surrounding the calendar grids. If the costs are secured after this Student Senate cycle, the calendar will be available free of charge to students after winter break.
The posters will cost the Resource Center $2,212, which will be paid for by the Senate, pending approval.
The other $2,788 came from the outside sponsors from the community who supported the idea.
Comparisons might be made to the
Women of KU Calendar, whose pictures feature scantily clad women, however, Catherine Bell, student body vice president and author of a bill to help fund the new calendar, does not want to pit one calendar against the other.
"The calendar is not to discredit the Women of KU calendar," Bell said. This is more to display their achievements."
Sterner said the purpose of the calendar is to show women who want to portray themselves as leaders and not as sexualicons.
Nick Sterner, director of Community Affairs and co-sponsor of the bill, said the calendar would stand on its own, but did offer an alternative to other calendars featuring women at the University.
Bell will be part of the calendar, along with 10 students and six faculty members.
Those to be pictured were nominated and voted on, then selected by a committee.
Bell said it was an honor to be selected.
The participants have not been finalized, but among those confirmed are Casey Collier, holdover senator, Laser Ajayi, residential senator, and Kaelyn Fox from the Center for Community Outreach.
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- Edited by Abby Sidesinger
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